Notes from Exile: Dear Judge
Log/Verse: daily reflections from prison, written every morning at my bunk. Part poem, part log book.
Every morning, before work or count, I sat at my bunk and wrote what I called ‘log/verse.’ I didn't know iambic pentameter from a weather vane. Words spilled out in primitive forms. These aren’t polished poems. They’re hybrid scribblings and stream-of-consciousness outpourings, designed to overcome the inherent ineffability of the penal experience, convey some visceral semblance, and more effectively communicate an inmate's day-to-day reality, trauma, and true center of gravity. This series shares them as I first wrote them, raw and unfiltered. Below was my first entry.
Dear Judge
If you could see me
now,
what should my life
be like,
or should I even have a
life.
I can still see
you,
your bench perched above
us all,
you in your robes and
omnipotent air,
I standing but legs
trembling.
You shook my hand—
what was that.
Did you see me
then.
And if you did
is this the man you
planned?
Shrinking inch by inch,
pound by pound,
day by hopeless
day.
For readers interested in longer reflections on justice, incarceration, and exile, my essays are linked here at Minutes Before Six..
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